​April 25, 2014 -- Professor Alex Wang commented on China passing the biggest changes to its environmental protection laws in 25 years. His comments appear in a Reuters article.

The prominence given to open information and public participation is the biggest improvement in the revision, according to Alex Wang, assistant law professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. Wang cautioned that it’s too soon to hail the amended law as anything beyond a signal of intent and aspiration, he said.

“If citizens truly ’supervise’ polluters as the law encourages, China will begin to make progress in turning its environmental crisis around,” Wang said in an e-mail. “But the proof is of course in the pudding. Given China’s history of weak environmental enforcement, the burden is on regulators to show that they now mean business.”